Post ContentBefore joining Microsoft in 2024, Mustafa Suleyman was a co-founder of Google’s DeepMind division. (File photo)
Microsoft is restructuring its AI leadership chart as part of its broader pursuit of artificial superintelligence.
Mustafa Suleyman, the company’s AI chief, will no longer be directly overseeing Copilot for consumers and other such initiatives. This is expected to free up the DeepMind co-founder to focus on building world-class AI models for generating source code, images and audio as well as reasoning capabilities.
Jacob Andreou, a former Snap executive who works in Microsoft’s AI unit, has been made an executive vice president in charge of the consumer and commercial Copilot experience, according to an internal memo by CEO Satya Nadella. Other executives such as Ryan Roslansky, Perry Clarke, and Charles Lamanna will head up Microsoft 365 applications and the Copilot platform, CNBC reported, citing the memo.
The new class of executives in charge of Copilot will report directly to Nadella.
“We are doubling down on our superintelligence mission with the talent and compute to build models that have real product impact, in terms of evals, COGS reduction, as well as advancing the frontier when it comes to meeting enterprise needs and achieving the next set of research breakthroughs,” Nadella was quoted as saying.
Suleyman said that he is excited about the shift because most of the future IP value will sit at the model layer. He said his role over the next three to five years will be to build highly cost-efficient, enterprise-focused model lineages for Microsoft.
“The next phase of this plan is to restructure our organisation to enable me to focus all my energy on our Superintelligence efforts and be able to deliver world class models for Microsoft over the next 5 years. These models will enable us to build enterprise tuned lineages that help improve all our products across the company,” he was quoted as saying.
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Suleyman joined Microsoft as the head of its AI division last year, following the acquisition of his Inflection startup by the Windows maker. He directly reports to Nadella. The famed British AI/ML researcher has argued against designing AI systems that are able to mimic consciousness by simulating emotions, desires, and a sense of self.
Microsoft’s Copilot shake-up comes amid mounting pressure on big tech companies to show a return on AI investors. The potential disruption by AI of software incumbents has also sparked concerns among investors. Many tech giants have also been left playing catch-up with Anthropic after its AI coding tools and workflow automation plugins saw rapid surge in popularity, especially among enterprise clients. OpenAI, for instance, is reportedly considering a major strategy shift to refocus on coding and business users while deprioritising other areas such as AI hardware and consumer products.
While Suleyman is focused on advancing Microsoft’s frontier AI development capabilities, Copilot’s value proposition relies heavily on integrating the latest models from third-party providers such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Microsoft has IP rights for OpenAI’s models and products through 2032.
The Copilot app saw over 6 million daily active users in February 2026, compared to 440 million ChatGPT users and 82 million Gemini users, as per data from app analytics website Sensor Tower. As for commercial users, only 3 per cent of Microsoft Office subscribers reportedly have access to the 365 Copilot add-on.
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To be sure, Suleyman has said that he will “stay directly involved in much of the day-to-day operation” of the broad Microsoft AI group that includes products such as the Bing search engine.
